


Smoke and Ashes

by accidental



Category: Dragon Age
Genre: Gen, Implied Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-18
Updated: 2013-02-18
Packaged: 2017-11-29 17:50:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 841
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/689765
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/accidental/pseuds/accidental
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She was a mother; she had a son. They couldn’t take that from her, though they had taken him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Smoke and Ashes

**Author's Note:**

> TW - implied character death.

She was a mother; she had a son. They couldn’t take that from her, though they had taken him. 

They couldn’t take her memories, and she remembered everything; the feel of him in her arms the first time she’d held him; the warmth and the weight of him, the raw bloody smell of his head and the way his tiny hand had gripped her finger, like he was never going to let go.

She remembered the look on his face when they came for him.

Her husband wanted to forget he’d had a son. He refused to speak the boy’s name out loud, and when she screamed it, over and over, into his face, he hit her, hard enough to shut her up. He’d built a fire in the yard, and burned the child’s clothes and his good winter boots, the little wooden animals he kept in a box beneath his bed; the blanket that had wrapped around his sleeping skin, and still held traces of him between its threads.

Sometimes, she thought she heard his voice.

On the edge of sleep, half awake, half dreaming, she heard him calling, and knew that he needed her. The first time it happened, she got up to go to him without thinking. Bare feet icy against the stone floor, the familiar routine of childhood fevers, bad dreams.

After a while she'd learned to keep to her bed. She lay still and silent in the darkness, and held her memories close. 

She had known what he was, long before he did. There were stories, whispered down through her family, of ancient curses; hair like flame and eyes the colour of burnstone. 

She’d waited, and prayed for him.

When it finally happened, he was twelve years old - almost as tall as she was, but skinny and pale as a birch sapling, all knees and elbows and nose. Her baby, her little boy. The smell of smoke clung to him in the cold air.

She shook him and screamed at him to run, and her fingers buried themselves in the flesh of his arms like talons, desperate to keep hold of him.

The cuffs they fastened around his wrists were too big; the chains that hung from them rattled as he shook. 

“Don’t worry about me, mutti,” he told her, “I’ll be alright.” Snow settled on his shoulders, like feathers. She couldn’t bring herself to believe she’d never see him again.

***

Sometimes, she thought she heard his voice.

On the edge of darkness, half asleep, half dreaming, she heard him calling, and knew he needed her.

He cried for her a lot, the first few years. She dreamed of him in dark places, and knew he was afraid, but she held the dreams close. She wore them like armour, wrapped them around her like a cloak. 

He was alive, and he hadn’t forgotten her.

***

The years went by, and each one was shorter and more bitter than the last. Her bones ached; her hair went from gold to grey. Her husband caught a fever in his lungs, and died with his sons name, flecked in blood, on his lips. She still refused to forgive him.

When the dreams stopped, she told herself it meant that he was happier; that he no longer needed her.  
She held her memories close, and at night she looked at the stars and hoped her son could see them too. It comforted her, to think that wherever he was, he saw the same stars; the same fierce sparks of light in the darkness. 

She was still a mother, though her son was far away.

***

One night, she dreamed of him in a dark place; in the ruins of a city beneath a bleeding sky, where the smell of smoke hung in the air and ashes settled on his shoulders like snow. 

Hair like flame and eyes the colour of burnstone. She’d know him anywhere, her little boy. 

She woke with a pain in her chest. He felt so close now - the feeling of him wrapped itself around her, a warmth and a weight around her heart. 

She thought she heard him calling her.

She got up, wrapping her shawl around her against the chill, and went to stand at the front door, almost expecting see him there, walking along the winding path from the village, on his way home. She’d never been able to believe she wouldn’t see him again.

The sky was clear, the stars sharp as diamonds, icy and unforgiving. She waited, her bare feet numb against the flagstones; looking out over the shabby little village, the bleak, scoured bones of the distant hills. 

She was a mother; she had a son. She waited, and prayed for him, as the sky gradually faded, turning the colour of bruises, then indigo, dove grey, pearl; and the feeling she’d had, of him being near, faded with it. It scattered, and blew away like smoke. 

She watched the stars go out, one by one, and knew that he was never coming back.


End file.
